| Summary: | (1) Background: <i>Bacillus anthracis</i> is a spore-forming, Gram-positive bacterium causing anthrax, a zoonosis affecting mainly livestock. When occasionally infecting humans, <i>B. anthracis</i> provokes three different clinical forms: cutaneous, digestive and inhalational anthrax. More recently, an injectional anthrax form has been described in intravenous drug users. (2) Case presentation: We report here the clinical and microbiological features, as well as the strain phylogenetic analysis, of the only injectional anthrax case observed in France so far. A 27-year-old patient presented a massive dermohypodermatitis with an extensive edema of the right arm, and the development of drug-resistant shocks. After three weeks in an intensive care unit, the patient recovered, but the microbiological identification of <i>B. anthracis</i> was achieved after a long delay. (3) Conclusions: Anthrax diagnostic may be difficult clinically and microbiologically. The phylogenetic analysis of the <i>Bacillus anthracis</i> strain PF1 confirmed its relatedness to the injectional anthrax European outbreak group-II.
|
|---|